While numerous prior inventions have taught the utilization of silent time during telecommunication transmission, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,551,581, Doughty, these contain significant differences compared to the present invention. Doughty deals with the ring interval or the silent interval between the rings. In the present invention as soon as a call is received or detected by the switch, data is immediately requested from the calling party or sent to the calling party. The detection of the rings is not used in the present invention. This results in a much more flexible and universal system.
Roach, Jr. et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,444, addresses the retrievaal of metering data, using a cellular system, but does not teach use of incomplete call time.